夢幻游艇：千萬寶貝的誕生

????奈赫特寫作的大局觀很棒，而且老天啊，這的確是很大的一個局！“琳達女士”總共的制造費用是4,000萬美元——而且要知道，購買這類游艇的買家往往還希望將來能夠用更高的價格賣出以獲利。這艘游艇由3萬多塊鋁合金零件拼接而成，總重487噸。奈赫特巧妙地描繪了金融危機來襲時，游艇的制造者、中間人和買主所承受的壓力——這些壓力在馮?埃爾曼的這艘游艇上被進一步放大，因為他被騙投資了一個旁氏騙局（Ponzi scheme）。作者同時也細致地描寫了各個片段細節，聚焦了參與這項龐大工程的工人：一名船體裝配工、一名管道工、一名木匠，還有一名在沒有適當防護的條件下從事有毒工作的非法移民。奈赫特的筆觸真摯而富有同情心。他刻意回避了一些航海專業術語，但海洋愛好者能夠從這本書中讀到的，是在海洋中逃避現實的理想和讓人大跌眼鏡的意外場景。也許這類書中最優秀的代表作是戴維?A?卡普蘭（《財富》撰稿人）的《我的船更大》（Mine's Bigger）。這本書記錄了湯姆?珀金斯的橫帆船“馬耳他游隼號”（Maltese Falcon）的制造過程。在《宏圖大志》書中，有一個令人震驚的場景。當游艇主人第一次來查看他即將完工的游艇時，拒絕進艙和船員見面。他說：“我沒必要到里面去?！钡阶詈?，有人察覺到，其實主人對游艇有些失望。

????沒錯，這是一艘龐大、昂貴的游艇，但外觀看上去也像一只巨大的白色籃球鞋。馮?埃爾曼在這艘游艇的制造計劃中最關心的，除了錢，就是內部裝潢。他們投入了巨大的精力挑選上好的瘤木材來打造床頭柜，尋找亮蜜色的縞瑪瑙來做成主廳的地板。但從中很難感受到他們對大海的渴望，更像是一座水上的豪華的宮殿，有一大批船員提供服務。在書的最后一章，道格?馮?埃爾曼告訴奈赫特：“大海對我來說有點失去魅力了。我們已經去過了很多地方。我仍然喜歡看到大海的景色，享受船上的服務。但一切都有點似曾相識的感覺?！?/p>

????很多人都說，不論一艘頂級游艇在你看來多么粗俗，它的制造過程都充滿藝術性，凝結了手藝高超的工匠在船塢的心血。按這種說法，大家都應該去買下這本書，讓奈赫特能保住飯碗，接著寫下一本書。（財富中文網）

????譯者：周詳

????Knecht does a first rate job with the big picture, and boy is it big. Lady Linda costs $40 million to build -- and who knew that people who commission boats like this generally expect to sell them at a profit? It's constructed of more than 30,000 pieces of aluminum and weighs 487 tons. Knecht deftly describes the pressures on builders, brokers, and owners when the financial crisis hits -- and how they are amplified in Von Allmen's case when he is tricked into investing in a Ponzi scheme. The author meticulously paints the small picture, too, zooming in for closeups of people working on the sprawling project: a shipfitter, a pipefitter, a carpenter, an illegal immigrant doing toxic work without proper safety gear. Knecht's voice is earnest and empathetic, and he studiously avoids nautical cant. What a sea-struck reader really wants from a book like this, though, is briny escapism combined with scenes of jaw-dropping excess. Maybe the best of the genre is Mine's Bigger, by David A. Kaplan (a Fortune contributor), which chronicles the creation of Tom Perkins's square-rigger, the Maltese Falcon. In Grand Ambition there are some astonishing scenes, as when the owner, inspecting his nearly completed yacht for the first time, declines to visit the crew quarters, saying "I don't need to go there." But in the end one gets the sense that the material is letting the author down.

????Yes, it's a big, expensive vessel, but it still looks like another giant, white, basketball shoe. What the Von Allmens appear to care about most in this project, besides the money, is the interior decorating. They take great care selecting the burlwood for their bedside tables and the light honey onyx for the floor of the main salon. But there is little sense that they long to be at sea, even aboard a sumptuous palace with a large crew to serve them. In the book's final chapter Doug Von Allmen tells Knecht: "The magic has worn off a bit; we have been to so many places already. I still like looking at the water and the service you get on board, but there's a bit of 'been there, done that.'"

??? It's often said that however vulgar an over-the-top yacht may appear to some people, its construction is a good thing because it keeps skilled artisans at work in boatyards. In the same spirit, you should go buy this book, to keep Knecht at work so that he'll write another.